naming guitar cages

[D-Tuned]

There are different ways of naming the 'cages', 'C-shape' for the proverbial C-chord we all learn in our first lesson being one of the chord-types. I've read about '1st position' but am not sure if that's a cage name or not. I'm trying to wrap my brain around something that will work for me in most situations. The chord-name ones become useless as soon as you change the tuning. For a while I tinkered around with names consisting of the string numbers where the root notes are like 42, 32, etc. but these drop dead as soon as one moves into the minor scale.

Any other memory methods?

[merlyn]

Yes.

[D-Tuned]

Yes.

Thank you

My suspicion that the cages would not work in the minor scale was off, they do for the natural minor which uses essentially the same notes. On-the-fly mental mods for other minor scales should be doable, I ain't there yet.

Each cage has one string on which there are normally only two notes (though this isn't exactly true) so I also explored using the string # that the 2 notes are on. This would make the old "C" cage a "3" because that's where the dual notes are. I oracticed testing which cage might sound best for a given backing track and use the following as the indexable beginning of the song title

• the key, say A
• the string number with the 2 cage notes
• the lower fret number of those cage notes

I was making some progress with this idea last night with a backing track with a title begining with A-27__
pointing at string #2 where the lower of the two notes would be a on fret 7 (D-tuned) in A major.

If on the other hand I think of them as cage-1, cage-2 in order of ascending order toward the bridge, that can work too relatively speaking as in a logical sequence of cages repeated farther up the neck as needed. D tuning just means starting a couple of frets higher.

This forum doesn't do polls, I'd be curious to know what most people use.

[merlyn]

I would think the most complete way is to learn the names of the notes on the neck, and learn the names of the notes in scales. Put the two together and you have all the fingerings there are, like playing a scale up one string. In practice though, we are going to end up with familiar fingerings.

I haven't heard fingerings called 'cages'. With the association of imprisonment, this may be appropriate.

What you're thinking of is the CAGED system. This is a set of fingerings that come out of the open position chord with that name. A C fingering is notes around a chord that would be C in the open position, or Bb on your guitar tuned down to D. An A fingering is based around the chord that would be A in the open position.

So your CAGED system, on a guitar tuned down to D, is BbGFDC, which doesn't really roll off the tongue.

[BobUnderwood]

Don't memorize notes - memorize scale degrees.

https://www.dummies.com/article/academi ... ar-155482/

[D-Tuned]

Don't memorize notes - memorize scale degrees.

https://www.dummies.com/article/academi ... ar-155482/

Thanks, found a used copy of the book, the 'dummy' descriptor being a Perfect Fi___t. I should learn to sing Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

But I still have use (and need) for memorised 'cages' (or patterns or shapes or fingerings or whatever else whoever else wants to call them) and a way to remember them quickly until they become second nature. They allow me to effortlessly stay in key to jam along and develop improvisation.

5-shapes-base-UseThis.png (169.93 KiB) Viewed 240 times

(Ignore the presets list)

When I posted I was looking for a good way to recall them, and have since narrowed it down to (in order of pref):

#1: string number where 2 notes are
#2: string number where root/s is/are
the other 2 methods are of less practical use from my viewpoint.

[merlyn]

I use the first fingering in your diagram, which is a CAGED E shape :

I remember that as 'G major with the first finger on the 7th (note of the scale)'. The next fingering up is G major with the first finger on the root :

This isn't a CAGED fingering. I remember this as 'G major with the first finger on the root'.

[D-Tuned]

My 'cages' evolve continuously. Take this youtube backing track in F#m:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGlFXFfiMUY

To jam with it I whip out my A-F#m cheatsheet

3#__A-F#m__cheatsheet-1000.png (207.67 KiB) Viewed 164 times

Although I continue with a mental-link to the legacy chord shape by shading the notes of that chord and including a pale chord letter (to be used with caution), I am now labeling the 'scale shapes' (yet another name for them) using only the string # with the 2 scale notes on it.

For an example let's say I think that a shape around fret #7 would sound good for this backing track, I opt for shape 2 (based on the legacy E chord). This "2" tells me that it is string #2 that has the 2 scale notes.

When I see 3 notes covering 4 positions on a string I'm minded of an arrow:

Note, Note, NOTHING, Note = left/descending arrow
Note, NOTHING, Note, Note = right/ascending arrow.

The 'arrow' strings POINT in pairs to the string with the 2 notes, 2 strings above it pointing 'down' and 2 strings below it pointing up. If there is no 2-note sring after 2 arrow-strings then the arrows reverse.

With these I'm set to build the shape from recall and start jamming. At this point in time it looks like I'll stick with this idea for a while to see how it works in the real world.

After a while I might get fed up with my own scheme and decide to try shape #4 not even knowing what it looks like but then build it from recall the same way and get softer tones.

[merlyn]

I had a look at the video you posted. There's quite a lot in it.

F# minor pentatonic
F# harmonic minor
F# Aeolian
F# blues scale

The progression is F#m D Bm C#7

I think the main point is that C#7 is not a diatonic chord in A. C# E# G# B. The E# is not in A, and your improvisations could reflect that when the chord is C#7. Arpeggios would work, and that's another thing you could get into, meaning more cheat sheets.

[D-Tuned]

I had a look at the video you posted. There's quite a lot in it.

F# minor pentatonic
F# harmonic minor
F# Aeolian
F# blues scale

The progression is F#m D Bm C#7

I think the main point is that C#7 is not a diatonic chord in A. C# E# G# B. The E# is not in A, and your improvisations could reflect that when the chord is C#7. Arpeggios would work, and that's another thing you could get into, meaning more cheat sheets.

Gotcha with my cheatsheet!

The song is in F#m but my cheatsheet covers A & F#m. The jam video I made for myself is actually chopped down to about 5 minutes, I didn't pick the piece for its complexity, I just liked what I heard, like to have a few in every key but I have zero academic patience so I only pick music that I like. I combine cheatsheet, some chord diagrams and a background usually from the original plus a dynamic output strip from SonicVisualiser (too bad we can't post videos and youtube upload is too much of a hassle). The 4 scales you mention are over my head for the forseeable future ))

[merlyn]

I was thinking you knew pentatonic scales. In the original CAGED diagram you posted the 4th and 7th are grey. If the 4th and 7th are left out of a major scale, we have the major pentatonic. In the first diagram pentatonic scales are the red notes (the root) plus the white notes.

You may have noticed there are five CAGED fingerings. You could look at CAGED fingerings as pentatonic fingerings with the 4th and 7th added in.

To me the good CAGED fingerings are the E shape (starting on the 7th) and the C shape (starting on the 3rd). The rest involve position shifts.

[D-Tuned]

Yes, I ghosted out the non-pentatonic notes to get my feet wet to the idea after having read an interesting bit of advice about it: 'instead of starting with a 7 note scale and then removing notes to arrive at pentatonic (which alas is exactly what I am inadvertantly doing in the diagrams), start with the latter and add notes to it if and when needed

[merlyn]

Here's a less usual pentatonic fingering derived from the spread G major fingering I posted above :

[BobUnderwood]

D-Tuned:

Your A-F#m cheatsheet has an error: Bbm should be Bm.

https://musictheorysite.com/minor-scales/

https://www.musictheoryforguitar.com/guitarscalesminor
(I'm not trying to sell this guy's books.)

If you learn your chord voicings and scale fingerings as scale degrees you'll be able change key more easily.

I'd concentrate on scale fingerings that cover only 4 frets - OTOH, how would you finger a chromatic scale?

[merlyn]

As a general observation we play music with our ears, not our eyes. No amount of visual information is going to help with that. At some point (preferably as soon as possible) visual information must be turned into a sound.

Perhaps worth noting that the shortest shortcut leads to exactly where you are. How short do you want your shortcut?